Category: 3. Business

The Guardian has successfully defended a libel action brought by the actor Noel Clarke over an investigation by the newspaper in which he was accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 women.

In a high court judgment handed down on Friday, Mrs Justice Steyn rejected Clarke’s claim. He had said the allegations set out in the Guardian’s investigation were false and that he had been the victim of an unlawful conspiracy.

Clarke, 49, had said he would seek £70m in damages if successful.

The Guardian relied on testimony from almost 30 people, 18 of whom gave accounts in court about their experiences of working with Clarke, a former star of Doctor Who.

Many said they had been directly affected by Clarke, while others said they had witnessed inappropriate behaviour.

The Guardian argued the allegations were true and that the articles and podcast about him were in the public interest.

The writer and producer of the Kidulthood trilogy sued Guardian News & Media (GNM) over seven articles and a podcast published between April 2021 and March 2022 in which more than 20 women accused him of sexual misconduct.

The allegations against Clarke were made up of the following elements:

• There were strong grounds to believe that over 15 years, he used his power to prey on and harass female colleagues.

• He sometimes bullied female colleagues.

• He engaged in unwanted sexual contact, kissing, touching or groping.

• He engaged in sexually inappropriate behaviour and comments.

• He was involved in professional misconduct.

• He took and shared explicit pictures and videos without consent, including secretly filming a young actor’s naked audition.

In closing submissions, Gavin Millar KC, for the Guardian, said Clarke had been forced to come up with an “elaborate conspiracy theory” to try to rebut the “overwhelming evidence” against him.

Clarke had been shown to be “precisely the man” depicted in the Guardian’s articles accusing him of sexual misconduct, vindicating its journalism, the high court heard.

The actor had denied all the allegations and variously claimed that his accusers were lying, embellishing incidents, motivated by grudges and that there was a conspiracy against him.

At the conclusion of the trial, Philip Williams, representing Clarke, argued that his client was the victim of an industry attempting a “purge” in the wake of the #MeToo movement. He highlighted the Benny Hill and Little Britain series and Carry On films as productions that would now be considered “inappropriate”, and said the treatment of Clarke “represents illiterate historical revisionism and completely ignores any nuance or context”.

Millar said Clarke had “made unpersuasive but revealing efforts to normalise and/or excuse conduct that most people would find – and would have found, whether 10 or 20 years ago – offensive and unacceptable”.

Steyn’s judgment means Clarke, who said his career had collapsed as a result of the articles, faces a hefty legal bill and may also be required to pay the bulk of the Guardian’s legal costs.

The trial was a rare case of #MeToo-type allegations published by a UK newspaper going to trial. A victory for Clarke would have been likely to make the press rethink future reporting on such issues.

After the publication of the Guardian’s first report on Clarke, Bafta suspended a lifetime achievement award that it had given him the previous week and ITV declined to broadcast the final episode of the thriller Viewpoint, in which he was starring.

Additionally, Sky cancelled the award-winning police show Bulletproof, which was created by and starred Clarke. He also left Unstoppable Film and TV, the production company he co-founded and which produced Bulletproof.

Baker McKenzie is proud to announce its collaboration with the University of Lorraine through the Baker McKenzie Scholarship. This meaningful initiative underscores the Firm’s commitment to fostering equal opportunity and promoting diversity within the legal profession. It is designed to support outstanding students enrolled in a Master 1 or Master 2 in Law program by offering a unique career opportunity and financial support.

Launched in January 2025 through a communication campaign within the University of Lorraine, the selection process attracted many talented individuals. Out of the many applications submitted, five students were invited to a final interview at Baker McKenzie’s Luxembourg office. The jury, which consisted of Jean-François Findling, Amar Hamouche, Elodie Duchene and Claire Danda was genuinely impressed by candidates’ remarkable presentations and unwavering determination. 

Following the interviews, two exceptional laureates were chosen: Emma Boutra and Iris Okom, who were awarded an internship as well as financial support. To recognize their talent and commitment, the three other finalists have also been offered an internship. The Firm would like to extend sincere congratulations to all the participants for their dedication and authenticity, which made this inaugural edition truly memorable.

Here are testimonials from the laureates:

Mina Colson: 
“The opportunity to complete my internship at Baker McKenzie in Luxembourg allowed me to confirm my particular interest in investment funds, significantly broaden my knowledge and reflect on the challenges of tomorrow.”

Mariama Ndiaye: 
“Working in Baker McKenzie’s international environment enabled me to affirm my interest in cross-border taxation and concretely prepare for the next chapter of my academic journey in Madrid.”

Emma Boutra: 
“Receiving the Baker McKenzie Scholarship is more than an honor, it’s a tangible boost to build the career I dream of: passing the CRFPA, pursuing an LLM abroad and practicing law beyond borders as a lawyer.”

Iris Okom: 
“The Baker McKenzie scholarship enabled me to finance my year of study abroad, a key step in my career. This concrete support, together with the internship offered, gives me the necessary impetus to build an international career and represents a valuable opportunity to discover the demands of the professional world within a firm of international excellence.”

We look forward to continuing this wonderful story with the University of Lorraine and welcoming our next talents!

Sweden is projected to require an additional 100–250 TWh of electricity over the next 25 years, and nuclear energy is set to play an important role in achieving that target. Vattenfall’s focus for the first units is at the Ringhals site on the Värö Peninsula, already home to a nuclear power station operated by Vattenfall.

Each Rolls-Royce SMR ‘factory-built’ nuclear power plant will generate 470MWe of clean low-carbon electricity, enough to power a million homes for more than 60 years.

 

Dan Gould, Rolls-Royce SMR
M +44 (0) 7717 720809
[email protected]
https://www.rolls-royce-smr.com/

India is working to significantly improve the accuracy of its weather forecasting systems to meet the growing demands of its renewable energy sector, a senior government official said on Friday.

With solar and wind energy generation highly dependent on local weather conditions, the country is finding traditional broad-scale forecasts – such as state-wide or regional predictions – no longer sufficient.

“You need a very, very granular forecast,” Central Electricity Authority Chair Ghanshyam Prasad said at a BloombergNEF Summit on green energy, adding that the ability to track cloud movements at specific locations was now critical.
Currently, India’s forecast resolution – the precision of weather predictions over small time intervals or areas – does not match 15-minute operating cycles of the power grid, where weather conditions can shift rapidly, he said. The goal was to improve the resolution to minimum possible distances, he added.

Beyond short-term forecasting, the government is also focusing on building long-term predictive tools that can aid planners in projecting weather trends over multi-year horizons.

“Across the world, nobody has that kind of visibility to forecast weather for that kind of horizon,” Prasad said. “But we are trying to build long-range forecasting tools which can give us at least some predictions.” These developments are seen as critical for ensuring power sector stability as India scales up its reliance on renewable sources. “Until we are able to do that, probably we will not be able to sustain the power sector as such,” Prasad said.

New Delhi has curbed its solar and coal power output during periods of low demand to keep its power grid stable and ease congestion in power lines as green supply rises, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) told Reuters earlier this week.

India added a record 22 GW of new solar and wind capacity in the first half of 2025 and is planning to increase non-fossil fuel power capacity to 500 GW by 2030.

As part of its reforms, the CEA is also shifting from a five-year energy planning cycle to an annual model.

“That’s a challenge that we have taken – if I do it every year, that means I will be able to capture the forecast better,” the official said.

India needs to improve the way it forecasts power demand if it wants to inject more renewable energy into the grid while avoiding blackouts, according to Ghanshyam Prasad, chairman of the Central Electricity Authority.

Generation has to reflect demand, Prasad said at the BloombergNEF summit in New Delhi on Friday, adding that 40 gigawatts of renewable capacity in the country is yet to find offtakers. The risk is the country ends up with stressed assets, something that the thermal power sector has experienced, he said.